Page 54 of Daddy's Reluctant Queen

“We were together every night for about a week before I happened across a news report about the election of the new D.A. You can’t imagine how pissed I was to discover it was her. The night I found out, I almost broke it off with her… but I didn’t. To this day, I still don’t know why.”

I take a deep breath. The memory of her face comes back to me. Her no-nonsense way of speaking to me. The completely fearless manner in which she stood up to me when we fought. That fight the night that I found out was started hot and ended much hotter.

“What I do know,” I go on, “is that she had my heart. Somewhere along the way, she captured me completely and the very next thing I knew, we were starting to consider what it would mean for us to be together.”

“You had to know that no one would ever accept it,” Sofia said softly. “She… even if she quit being a D.A., no one in your Bratva would ever trust you.”

“Yeah,” I say in response. “Yeah, that was the size of it. One night, Ignat found out about her. Showed up to the house while she was here and put two and two together. I’m lucky it was him and not any of my brigadiers. Ignat’s loyalty is unmatched. He’d follow me into Hell without question.”

I have to pause. The night he came over was a comedy of errors in a way. I was trying to keep him in the foyer. Angela and I had just finished making love in the living room and she was in the kitchen. As I went to usher him out, she came walking into view wearing nothing but my dress shirt. Ignat was as equally shocked as he was furious.

“Ignat was the one who convinced me to break it off with her,” I tell her. “He made it clear that if I didn’t do that, then someone in this brotherhood would decide for me.”

I stop there, giving her a side glance. I don’t want to tell her the details of what happened next. If she believed me, I don’t think she could handle it. Not now.

“He was right,” she says. “Wasn’t he?”

I look down at my hands for a second, then, “A couple of years in, she got pregnant. The night she told me, I told her that she had to choose to end our relationship or the pregnancy.” I pause, the last letter she wrote me still stinging in my mind. “She chose the relationship.”

I glance over and see her pursing her lips, the slightest bit of judgment on her face.

“I didn’t know I’d had a son until after she was dead,” I tell her. “It had been a few years. I didn’t want to intrude on her. Once I did know, however…”

She takes my hand. I pull it away from her.

“Don’t pity me,” I say. “This is the life. I took a chance and I lost.”

“I’m not pitying you,” she says. “I’m sad for you. It’s a sad story.”

I scoff. “This life is full of sad stories, Princess.”

She reaches over and takes my hand again. It’s soft and so fucking welcome. I squeeze it as she scoots closer to me.

“You loved her.”

“More than anything,” I whisper. “But she’s gone and I have to live with that.”

She rests her head on my shoulder and something inside blooms. A warm feeling rushes comfortably through me.

“Did you make her killer pay?” she asks me.

“I did,” I say honestly.

“Good.”

The irony isn’t lost on me. The way Sofia came into my life with her own need to collect on the same debt makes me wonder where she is now with it. I look down at the top of her head, focusing on her shiny hair. I’d like to think she’s let it go. At least for now.

But the way she attacked Cyril…

“You should know something,” I say. “I should have told you already, but with all the excitement yesterday, it slipped my mind.”

“What is it?”

“You attacked Cyril because you thought he killed your brother. You were mistaken. He’s not dead.”

She lifts her head and looks at me, trying to find the lie. “What?”

“I haven’t ordered his death, Sofia.”